Realization
by MrWezlum18
Summary: Naruto, Sakura, and Choji go on what is expected to be a no-brainer mission, but are ambushed and nearly killed. But the real story is what happens after. Rated T for language and slight gore, chapter 2 edited today, so now its even better! ... READ!
1. Chapter 1

**I'm taking from my main fic for now, mainly because I'm tired of writing it at the moment, but I had this idea while reading some Naruto fics and had to write it down before I forget it.**

Sakura blinked.

Only mere minutes ago, she, Naruto and Choji had been leaping along the treetops of the woods north of Konoha, heading towards a possible lead on Sasuke's whereabouts, Yamato had been on a mission, and Sai was in the hospital recovering from his 'quarrel' with root... so Sakura and Naruto asked Choji to be their third teammate left for their mission.

They had been moving at a quick pace, trying to conserve as much energy as possible so they didn't have to stop...

But that was then... This was now.

As they passed through a clearing a dozen sound shinobi had leaped on them.

"Uchiha-sama is getting very fed up with your 'rescue' attempts!" one of them hissed

"Well tell him I said: 'Tough!" roared Naruto, and he threw all the shinobi on him away with a burst of red chakra.

He grabbed one of the retreating ninja by the ankle, "Get off her!" he bellowed, swinging the poor guy into his comrades sending them flying...

Strong as Choji was, he didn't need any help with his enemies.

"Thanks." said Sakura standing up and pulling on her gloves, "Lets send these guys back in halves!"

"How about quarters?" replied Naruto, "Kage Bunsion no Jutsu!" Three fox chakra-enhanced clones appeared in a puff and all pulled out kunai.

The ensuing battle did not last long considering that 12 sound shinobi were up against two very pissed off students two of the sannin and one of the best of the Akimichi clan.

As the last sound ninja fell with thunk and a splat, the sound squad captain stepped forward. Sakura and Naruto knew just from looking at this man that he would not go down easily. He was among the elite of the late Orochimaru's shinobi.

"This is annoying the shit out of me!" groaned the sound nin. "Well, lets end this."

The ninja moved like no other sound nin they had fought before. With two quick jabs he disarmed Choji and with another he sent him crashing to the ground, out cold.

He dodged Naruto's lunge and as Naruto flew past him the sound ninja grabbed Naruto's foot and swung him in to the trunk of a tree and then into Sakura, Naruto feel in a heap, his back and ribs fractured...

Sakura saw Naruto fall limp, and suddenly became enraged, "You'll pay for that!" she bellowed, and brought her fist down on the earth, causing a shockwave that caused the sound jonin to lose his footing, as he recovered Sakura sent him flying with an uppercut.

But he wasn't done, he growled with anger, and unsheathed the katana on his back. Sakura met him half way to the ground with her kunai. They clashed several times.

But the sound nin was anbu level at least... and eventually Sakura had to fall... the ninja slashed her right quad and she fell to her knees, the sound nin leveled the sword at her throat.

"Say good-bye!"

He did a spin to add more power to his swing, expecting to see a fountain of blood in the next moment...

But what his sword struck was not the neck a helpless koinichi but the right side of an extremely angry biju container. The fox had healed his back enough that he could leap in front of Sakura, ending with the katana embedded in his right side as far as his spine.

Blood streamed out of the wound, covering the ground.

The sound ninja stared at him in shock.

"Uchiha-sama told me about you, your greatest dream is to be Hokage isn't it? If you could run, why didn't you try to escape?"

"And abandon my friends?"

"You place that much value on your friends?" the enemy asked stupefied.

"Of coarse." Naruto gasped, beginning to draw chakra into his palm, "and besides, becoming Hokage is meaningless compared to protecting Sakura-chan!!!!!"

Naruto grabbed the sound nin's wrist, and raised his palm full of spinning chakra, "Now good-bye yourself! Rasengan!!!!!"

Naruto's attack shredded the top half of the sound ninja's body, such was the intensity of Naruto's anger.

"Regret your deeds in hell you bastard." and with that Naruto collapsed.

Sakura rushed over to Naruto, her leg injury insignificant now; "Naruto!!!!" she cried.

Sakura had always known that Naruto liked her, but she had always dismissed it as a silly little crush, she thought he would simply get over her with time, but it was clear that for the first time she was wrong...

She was wrong in every sense of the word when it came to Naruto, her eyes were finally opened now that this young man was dying in her lap...

She realized now that everything he had ever done had been, under the surface, for her.

She remembered him as child throwing some small rocks at a group of girls making fun of her forehead...

She realized that he wanted to be Hokage to impress her, as much as earn everyone else's respect...

She had claimed to 'love' Sasuke, when really **that** had been a silly crush...

He had put his life on the line to bring back Sasuke for her, even if it cost him both of his dreams...

He would just simply smile and do it just so she would smile again...

"You... really are... in love with me aren't you?" she asked the unconscious dreamer.

She knew know that the extent of his feelings for her were far deeper than she had ever imagined, and now just as the life in him was beginning to fade... she realized that if he were to die... she would die too.

Sakura felt as if she would collapse from the weight of these emotions torwards her teamate that she had discovered, she shook her head to clear it and took a look at Naruto, the color quickly leaving his face...

She examined the wound quickly, she could not heal this with out help, she just didn't have that kind of chakra...

Unless...

She looked over to Choji, he was still out cold, but his life was not in danger. She dug in his pockets and found a small plastic capsule with three sections, each with a single pill inside.

The pills were color-coded, there was a yellow, a green, and a red one; each more dangerous than the last...

"Naruto, you've put you're life in danger for me so many time... now maybe I can begin to pay you back!"

Without hesitation, she swallowed the red pill, and in moments she felt a great surge of power unlike anything she had ever experienced! Her chakra grew to incredible heights, so much so that it started to leak from her body.

But obviously it came with a price, these pills were designed for the heavy-set Akimichi clan, so using this pill herself was most definitely suicidal... she already felt as if her very essence was being drained away...

Wasting no time, she ran sprinted back to Naruto and used her chakra to cut away his jacket and shirt... then using her years of medical training, began to surgically remove the katana blade and heal all the severed muscles and organs.

She put forth all of her considerable power, and the work of a whole unit of medninjas was done in mere minutes!

Naruto's life was saved! There was hardly a trace of the wound except for a fine white line accross his side.

Using the last of her will power to stay conscious, Sakura used a simple ninja technique to regurgitate the rest of the chili pill from her stomach, hopefully she could avoid its constant cell-destruction side-effect in this way... but her hopes weren't high...

... So she simply lay down next to Naruto and as her vision faded into blackness, she watched Naruto's re-colored face, and wondered what could have been...


	2. chapter 2

The first thing that came back to Sakura was her hearing. She could hear several indistinct voices hovering over and around her, but she couldn't make out any thing they said or recognize them. All sounds seemed to travel at a snail's pace from her ears to her brain, distorting them and making them incomprehensible.

Next she gained back her sense of touch, she was laying down. But it was not the cold, hard ground, on which she vaguely remembered passing out on, it felt soft and warm. She felt that her back ached slightly, like she had been lying in this position for far too long. She felt her stomach rumble a little bit; she was hungry.

She also realized that she could taste again as well. It wasn't too hard to over look since her mouth tasted like morning breath, mud, and gauze at the same time.

'Yuck.' she thought vaguely.

At this point she was now able to catch some of what was being said, but she still was only able to catch disconnected fragments of speech; of which she still could not tell apart the voices.

"So lucky..."

"Gave me..."

"Close call, if you hadn't..."

"She..."

"Heart attack, I swear..."

Trying to make sense of this only made her head ache even more, so she focused solely on regaining her senses before trying to do anything else.

Her nose seemed to come back to life now. She could smell something flowery, but the smell wasn't strong enough to mask the familiar smell of plastic and antiseptics that clung to all hospital rooms.

Her sense of touch returned in full now, and she realized that her body ached everywhere, not just her head and back. She felt as if someone had tried to pull her intestines out of her mouth. It was not pleasant, and she could feel a thick layer of bandages covering her abdomen. Apparently she had been in surgery recently.

Her hearing sharpened as well, she could hear almost everything now.

"It was even worse than when Choji..."

"It's alright, I knew what I was dealing with this..."

"How is Choji anyway?"

"He's fine, he went..."

"Its been three days, are you sure she will..."

"She's going to be fine Naruto..."

"Naruto..."

At this, Sakura finally cracked her eyes open about half way.

Her vision was horribly blurry, it gave her a head ache just to look around, it made her want to close her eyes again, but she kept them open, and gradually the colorful blurs began to sharpen.

First she saw that she was indeed laying in a hospital bed, with a blanket drawn up to her shoulders. Of what she could see, she was no longer in her ninja gear, but in a hospital gown.

Slowly her vision improved so that she could make out the end of the bed and the people around her. There were three people around the foot of her bed talking. They all sounded very stressed.

As her hearing finally approached one hundred percent function ability she was able to tell the voices apart and place the names of her visitors even if she couldn't quite see them properly.

One was definitely her master: Tsunade-sama. The one in black close by had to be Shizune.

And the splash of orange in her vision had to be...

"Naruto...?" She finally managed to get out.

Everyone jumped at the sound of her voice.

Naruto leaped out of his chair and rushed to her bedside. He seemed to be lost for words.

Up close he seemed very disheveled, his jacket was unzipped, revealing the First Hokage's necklace hanging from his neck, his hair was even more messed up than usual, and there were obvious dark circles under his eyes, which shined with joy, relief, and guilt...?

"Sakura?" came Tsunade's voice.

Sakura focused on her masters face.

"How do you feel?" Tsunade asked in a forced calm.

"Fine." Sakura said with a slight croak.

"Alright then. Naruto, move. I need to do some tests before you can talk to her."

Naruto was escorted to the door with much complaining.

During her talks with Sakura, Tsunade held a mirror up Sakura's face to show her the visable damage, she almost didn't recognize herself. The Chili pill had transformed all of her body fat into pure chakra, but not being of Choji's clan, it had left her looking like a severe anorexic. She was practically a stick figure!

However Tsunade told her that it had been much worse when she arrived in Naruto's arms. She had been on an IV drip since then allowing her body to recover quickly.

"After some rest and a few square meals, you should be back to your old self in no time."

Indeed, since she had woken up, all the color seemed to come back into her, making the leanness in her appearance almost un-noticeable.

An hour later, Naruto was allowed back in.

"Well, Tsunade-sama says that I suffered far worse from the chilli pill than Choji ever did when he fought the sound four, but she was able to work fast enough to reverse the effects since she knew how to counter it this time." said Sakura, sitting up, and fully awake and aware now. She had a tray of hot food on her lap courtesy of Choji, who had left already.

"Yeah." said Naruto moodily.

"What's wrong with you? Are you sad that I survived?" asked Sakura sarcastically, as she munched on some barbecue pork.

"No!" said Naruto quickly, "It's just that..."

"What is it?"

"Well... eh..."

"Spill it!"

"You almost died!" Naruto nearly shouted. "You nearly died, just to save me! Don't do that, I'm not worth it."

Sakura was taken aback. "Naruto, how can you say that? It's like you said, you can't abandon your friends, if there is any way to save them; you have to take it no matter what."

Now it was Naruto's turn to be taken aback.

"What? You think that only applies to you? I have morals too you know!"

Naruto looked a little sheepish, and muttered something incomprehensible.

"Besides, you're supposed to be the next Hokage! If that's the case, then I **really** have to watch your back!" Sakura said jokingly.

Naruto finally laughed and viably cheered up at that.

"Hey, don't make fun, I **will** be the Hokage someday! Thanks to you now anyway."

Sakura turned a little red and mumbled, "Don't mention it." At which Naruto laughed even harder.

'This is nice.' Sakura thought. 'We all made it back alive, and laughing again.'

"Hey, Naruto!" said Sakura suddenly.

"Eh?"

"Come here."

Naruto leaned forward a bit.

"Closer."

He leaned forward a bit more.

"Baka! Closer! I want to tell you something."

Naruto leaned towards her until there was about a foot between his face and hers.

Impatiently she grabbed his collar and pulled his face forward to meet hers in a clean, but long and long hoped for, and happily returned, kiss.

****

THE END


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